Voiceofreason01:obvious tampering with the camera footage, body has been disturbed, nobody called the coroner for hours, obvious tampering with the physical evidence.....nope seems totally legit to me.

SlothB77:Voiceofreason01: obvious tampering with the camera footage, body has been disturbed, nobody called the coroner for hours, obvious tampering with the physical evidence.....nope seems totally legit to me.

And the organs are farking missing.

The fingernails and the missing organs sounds more to me like the funeral home farking up. I mean at the minimum they would have noticed that the organs were missing and pointed it out or noted it somewhere.

Voiceofreason01:obvious tampering with the camera footage, body has been disturbed, nobody called the coroner for hours, obvious tampering with the physical evidence.....nope seems totally legit to me.

I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for why a kid's bloodied dead body was found rolled up in a gym mat.

Authorities say Kendrick Johnson fell into the mat and suffocated while trying to retrieve a sneaker

Exactly. Kids and their sneakers these days, you have to look out for mats. They're terrible suffocation hazards with the way they automatically roll up around people.

Look, the police would love to clear this all up for everyone and the easiest way is with video or evidence on the dead body but you know how these things go. Technology is glitchy and let's see YOU differentiate between a kidney and a newspaper, mister internet M.D.

patrick767:So... he fell inside a rolled up gym mat? How the fark does that happen? Maybe he fell on a mat and it rolled itself up? Really?

Perhaps someone tossed his shoe into the rolled-up mat (standing vertically against the wall), and he went in after it and got stuck. That's the most plausible explanation I can think of that would make his death an accident.

SlothB77:Voiceofreason01: obvious tampering with the camera footage, body has been disturbed, nobody called the coroner for hours, obvious tampering with the physical evidence.....nope seems totally legit to me.

wxboy:patrick767: So... he fell inside a rolled up gym mat? How the fark does that happen? Maybe he fell on a mat and it rolled itself up? Really?

Perhaps someone tossed his shoe into the rolled-up mat (standing vertically against the wall), and he went in after it and got stuck. That's the most plausible explanation I can think of that would make his death an accident.

And the blood? I don't think falling into a mat would cause much bloodshed. Maybe the gym mat was filled with razor blades!

wxboy:patrick767: So... he fell inside a rolled up gym mat? How the fark does that happen? Maybe he fell on a mat and it rolled itself up? Really?

Perhaps someone tossed his shoe into the rolled-up mat (standing vertically against the wall), and he went in after it and got stuck. That's the most plausible explanation I can think of that would make his death an accident.

There are other articles that suggest he would place/hide his shoes in the mats rather than use a locker. There's also a suggestion that there is video of him going into the gym that day, and very few other details about what else is on that video, aside from a color guard practice.And on a larger scale, there are articles about his town being racially divided in the old-school sense of the term.

patrick767:wxboy: patrick767: So... he fell inside a rolled up gym mat? How the fark does that happen? Maybe he fell on a mat and it rolled itself up? Really?

Perhaps someone tossed his shoe into the rolled-up mat (standing vertically against the wall), and he went in after it and got stuck. That's the most plausible explanation I can think of that would make his death an accident.

And the blood? I don't think falling into a mat would cause much bloodshed. Maybe the gym mat was filled with razor blades!

I imagine if you were stuck upside down for long enough, blood would start coming out of your ears as it starts collecting in the brain.

Facetious_Speciest:Again, the mats were stacked vertically, already rolled. In theory, the guy was trying to reach down into one and fell in.

He got bored in there and cut his nails before barfing out his guts which some rats dragged off for dinner. Then some one thought his butt looked like a recycling bin and shoved their old newspapers into him.

Tman144:What? How do you turn a body over to a coroner without organs? Who took the organs out?!? Are we quoting the second coroner's report?

The article could have been more clear. Did the first coroner find an organ-less body? What gives. Maybe a timeline or chronological explanation of the investigation would be nice. Either way, accidental death by gym mat sounds suspicious.

pute kisses like a man:Tman144: What? How do you turn a body over to a coroner without organs? Who took the organs out?!? Are we quoting the second coroner's report?

The article could have been more clear. Did the first coroner find an organ-less body? What gives. Maybe a timeline or chronological explanation of the investigation would be nice. Either way, accidental death by gym mat sounds suspicious.

As far as I know they didn't discover that the organs weren't there until the body was exhumed. I believe they were there during the autopsies. That part sounds like a funeral home farkup. There's obviously some sort of cover up going on.

Seriously? That's how I felt when this story first hit Fark. In theory, the kid reached down into the mat to get his shoes (he apparently frequently hid his shoes around the gym), fell in, and then got wedged in, slowly dying, hearing other people come into the gymnasium and play basketball or whatever as he died, unable to say or do anything. Pure nightmare fuel.

Seriously? That's how I felt when this story first hit Fark. In theory, the kid reached down into the mat to get his shoes (he apparently frequently hid his shoes around the gym), fell in, and then got wedged in, slowly dying, hearing other people come into the gymnasium and play basketball or whatever as he died, unable to say or do anything. Pure nightmare fuel.

Except the photo I've seen shows the sneakers resting next to his feet (as brigid_fitch mentioned), exactly as if someone took them off & dumped them there *after* his body was already wedged into the mat.

Except the photo I've seen shows the sneakers resting next to his feet (as brigid_fitch mentioned), exactly as if someone took them off & dumped them there *after* his body was already wedged into the mat.

Look at more than one photo. A pair of white shoes was found atop him, his blood was around a black shoe found under him.

Seriously? That's how I felt when this story first hit Fark. In theory, the kid reached down into the mat to get his shoes (he apparently frequently hid his shoes around the gym), fell in, and then got wedged in, slowly dying, hearing other people come into the gymnasium and play basketball or whatever as he died, unable to say or do anything. Pure nightmare fuel.

Obviously just a freak accident. It could happen to anyone. But they do need to re-examine their mat rolling policies.

Not to be contrarian or anything, but I don't think anything in this case is particularly suspicious so far. Let's not forget the death was 10 months ago, not yesterday. Not all police are well versed in dealing with this kind of situation, particularly if they are certain it is not a homicide and on a high school campus. Its therefore not a surprise that evidence was not handled properly, and that the coroner was not immediately notified. Mistakes happen. They opened up the sealed body bag for the family- which is understandable but also a total breach of proper evidence collection. The scene was therefore not properly handled. This does not imply wrongdoing or a cover up. If the police thought, through interviews with witnesses or others, that the "shoe" theory was the most likely plausible explanation for the death, it would explain why they handled the case the way they did. I can't speak for the video, but camera footage is often grainy and out of focus. motion-sensitive cameras are often inadequately triggered on or off. I don't think this means anything, but an A/V expert would probably have something to say about this.

Re; the body- three coroners had their hands on this body, and I assume an autopsy was performed. Are we to be shocked that the organs were not in the body?

What I would want to know is why this kid was in they gym by himself with no one around? Or were there witnesses we just haven't heard about (since this story is entirely generated by the family of the deceased) who saw the kid go after his missing shoe?